Exploring Marksburg Castle-Germany
In the fall of 2024, Matthew and I were on a Viking River Cruise, and we decided to take an optional excursion to tour Marksburg Castle. Who wouldn’t want to walk the halls and imagine being royalty for an hour or two? It ended up being one of our favorite excursions and was an incredibly special experience as it is one of only two castles in all of Germany that has never been destroyed or captured. Read on to find out about our experience while touring the castle so you can decide if it is something you and your family should stop to see.
Things To Know
The view of the Marksburg from the UNESCO World heritage site-the Upper Middle Rhine Valley. I took this photo from our Viking ship.
Visiting:
The castle can only be visited if you are taking a guided tour.
The tour takes about 50 minutes.
There is a cafe and restrooms on site.
You can get married in the Coat of Arms Hall.
Good dogs are welcome.
Reservations are necessary only for large groups or for special tours.
Childrens Tours
Flashlight Tours
Drama Tours
The tour includes history of the castle and informs patrons of what life was like during the Middle Ages.
Tickets for the tour can be purchased at the souvenir shop.
Opening Hours Summer Season (March-October)
10am-5pm.
The last tour starts at 5pm.
Tours take place regularly during opening hours.
A English Language guided tour takes place daily at 1:00pm and 4:00pm.
Opening Hours Winter Season (November-February)
11am-4pm.
Closed Christmas Eve and Christmas Day,
Tours take place hourly during opening hours.
Prices:
Adults: $11
Children & Adolescents up to 15 years of age: $8
Children under 6 years of age: Free
Family Ticket (up to 2 adults with up to 6 children up to 15 years of age): $24
Citizens of the city of Braubach: Free
Parking:
You can park in the large car park that is located just below the castle (this is also where our bus parked).
From the parking lot, you must walk along the serpentine path (it has a slight incline) up to the castle gate. The walk takes 5-7 minutes, or you can take the stairs (120 steps).
Photo taken as I was walking from the parking lot up to the Castle. There were chestnut trees all around the property.
In the summer the parking lot is guarded.
Parking Fees:
Cars: $4
Motorhomes & Coaches $8
Motorcycles $2
The Town Braubach:
Photo taken from our Viking bus on our way through town up to the castle. It was maybe a 10-minute drive.
The castle has watched over the town of Braubach since the 13th century. Our ship docked along the Rhine and we traveled by bus through the town and up to the castle for our tour. The castle was built as a stone keep in 1100 and then expanded into a castle in 1117 to protect the town. There used to be a mine in the town but now it recycles car batteries and is the largest producer of lead in Europe. Because of the location of the castle, it was hard to approach so it was never attacked or overtaken. As we drove through the town, we could still see lots of interesting medieval details like the old town gate pictured below.
The Tour
The Drawbridge Gate you have to cross to enter the castle. Once you cross there is an antique bookstore on the right that was the room of the castle’s gate keeper 500 years ago.
We booked our tour through Viking about 4 months ahead of our cruise. It cost $99 and our group consisted of about 24 people. If you are on your own and taking the tour, it will be different than the Viking Cruise set up, but the biggest differences I can identify based on my research is the price and the size of the groups. Our guide was a castle guide, and we went through the same 50-minute tour that is given daily for any patron.
Items you should bring:
Water to stay hydrated. They do have a cafe if you forgot to bring your own.
Sunscreen. You go from being outside to inside often, but we were there in August, and it was hot and sunny.
Weather appropriate clothing. Again, you go from being outside to inside often and there is no air conditioning or heat. I wish I had a cooling towel or a handheld fan because inside some of those rooms it was really warm and stuffy.
Good walking shoes. The stairs are steep especially as you are first getting inside. If you need walking sticks or any kind of aide, bring it with you. Because this was one of the only castles that was untouched by any intruder, the owners also left it untouched. This means that there are no handrails, no warning signs, no added light fixtures, etc. In the states we are used to things being modernized for safety, but the owners chose to keep this experience and interior as authentic as possible so watch your step!
Camera. I took a ton of photos on my phone, but many people had nice cameras. There was much to see inside the castle, but it also offered some incredible views.
Some the information below is from the notes I took as our guide walked us along, and some is taken straight from the Marksburg Castle website www.marksburg.de.
Our guide actually used this key to get in and out of the front door and some of the rooms inside the castle. Even the housekeeper that lives on the property has to use a key just like this.
The tour starts at the Fox Gate (photo above). As we waited for the tour to begin, I took some photos of my surroundings. Our Viking guide passed our group over to the castle guide. We were lucky to have headsets so our guide talked into a microphone, and we could all hear her no matter where we were wandering around.
Stewards Tower.
Once we got through the Fox Gate, we walked towards the Arrow Slit Gate or “Schartentor”. Above the doorway there is a machicolation, a little oriel from which the defenders would throw stones onto attacking enemies' heads if they had advanced this far. You can see in my photo above, the gateway in the "Vogtsturm" (Steward's Tower) was reduced in size towards the end of the 17th century. Horses used to pass through this gate (hence the need for the larger opening).
Once we passed through Stewards tower, we hit the Riders Stairway. This was definitely the most difficult part of the tour. One of the patrons in our group actually fell. Watch where you are stepping at all times. It is a steep incline and uneven at every move you make.
Along the walls there is a display showing the succession of the various owners of Marksburg Castle and their coats of arms, starting with the Counts of Eppstein and ending with the Deutsche Burgenvereinigung (German Castles Association).
Once you get up the stairway, you have actually arrived inside the castle. Just to the left you can see the caretaker’s quarters (still occupied today). Can you imagine having to haul groceries up from the parking lot and up those crazy stairs every week?! Guess it is worth it to live in a castle.
Once you get past the caretakers’ quarters you are in front of the oldest main residential building, the Romanesque Palas. It dates back to the year 1239 and today it houses the offices and the apartment of the general manager of the Deutsche Burgenvereinigung (German Castles Association). The Palas belongs to the areas of the castle that aren't part of the tour. Those parts were altered from the inside after the Middle Ages, when soldiers inhabited the castle for centuries. Not really much to see here.
Matthew enjoying the fire power in the Small Battery.
Across from the Palas is the Small Battery. It was added in 1711, and today it includes the copy of one of the oldest firearms of that type in Germany, a cannon from 1450. Below is a photo from the small battery where you can see the caretakers’ quarters and the walkway we just walked up from.
Straight down the courtyard is the Great Battery. The large cannons found here are aimed at the Rhine River to protect the castle from siege. It was really surreal to walk amongst these huge cannons and to look out onto the Rhine and imagine passing ships going by and bracing for attack. You can see where they put plastic up over the openings where the cannons would roll out. I put my head against the plastic to take a look and it was a long and straight plummet down!
Just past the Great Battery is a doorway to a majestic medieval herb garden. The blooms are lovely, but our favorite part of the garden was the views of the Rhine! It has a stunning overlook where we could have perched for hours. We got someone from our group to snap some photos of us together.
There are two patches of about 150 plants known in Europe in the Middle Ages. Most of them are important medical plants and spices, but some like the mandrake or the Devil's snare were said to be used by witches, while others like the deadly nightshade and the hemlock are very poisonous.
After climbing a wooden staircase (transitional photos below), we made it to the center of the castle: the courtyard with a central tower, referred to as the keep. After the Keep, we head into the wine cellar. There were multiple barrels and a whole big set up. Wine was super important back in the day because there was no water filtration system and water was unsafe to drink so wine it was!
You could literally stand up inside this fireplace.
Next, we moved into the kitchen which is situated on the ground floor of the Gothic Hall Building from 1435. Our guide told us that the servants used to sleep on the kitchen floor on hay and did not have specific quarters in the castle. There was a huge fireplace and a wine press inside. It was one of the biggest rooms we saw (maybe the biggest).
The first room on the next floor is the noble family's bedchamber. There were some things we noticed immediately, like the wood paneling, how small the bed was (maybe for someone 5ft tall), and a seating and reading area in the window niche. It was also one of the few rooms in the castle to be heated by a stove (metal boxes in photo below with a fire extinguisher beside it).
Some other really interesting things that the guide pointed out were the money chest on the table (for easy transportation in case of an emergency evacuation-same with the wardrobe chest because clothing was so expensive), and how the bed was situated so that the sleeper was not actually laying down.
In these times nobility believed that if they slept lying down, they would die so they actually had beds made so they could sleep sitting up. Apparently, there were many superstitions like this back in these times. You can also see from a photo below how short the doorframes were. Matt is just over 6ft tall for reference.
The adjoining room to the bedroom is the Great Hall, the very heart of courtly life. As a combined living and dining room, leisure time was spent playing chess or making music.
The most fascinating part of the room was a small passage through the outer wall RIGHT BEHIND the table that lead up to the medieval toilet, a privy. You can see in the photos below. I mean at least there was a door?
The ceiling had detailing as well as the walls. It was clear that entertaining was done in this room. Our guide told us that the servants had to carry the top of the table into the room with all the food already on it. I stood in the room for a moment trying to logistically comprehend that.
No castle would be complete without the next room, a 14th century chapel, with beautifully painted walls and ceilings. It was not a big room by any means but would only have been used by the noble family for daily prayers and services. In one of the niches, there is a statue which is a copy of a 15th century Rhenish Virgin Mary (photo below). Our guide told us that the oldest thing in the castle are the stone heads in the chapel (photo below).
One of my favorite things about the castle was the defense corridor. from the chapel you squeezed into a super tight corridor that was meant to protect the noble family if there ever was a breech inside the castle. You could not even draw a sword inside the corridor, that’s how tight the walls were. There is a photo below of a patron entering the corridor and you can see her squeezing her shoulders together to get through the narrow doorway.
Some more photos through what the castle calls the Rhine Stairway. This also leads into the Rhine Wing of the castle built in 1706.
Once we got through the corridor, we got to check out the Armory. Artefacts from excavation work carried out in and around the castle grounds - coins, glass, arrow heads, dice - are on display in glass cabinets across the top of the room. The chest plates in the photos below are authentic. There is something to discover in every inch of this room. I also have a photo of the view from the windows-there is a nice view of a courtyard from this room.
After admiring all of the tools used for defending, we went into the next room to admire the “Gibmel Collection”, a display of twelve life-sized figurines from 1880 which demonstrates the changes made to armor and weaponry from ancient to early modern times. The armor on display consists of extremely detailed replicas as well as original pieces. Our guide used the key to get us all in and out of this room and said that the collection of armor was worth $5 million euro!
The pointy shoes that you see in one of the photos below was purely for fashion (not for impaling people like I was thinking). The knight holding a bow is holding a real medieval bow! The room featured some tournament armor and some that was actually used for battle. You could probably guess which is which based on the look of it.
In the middle of the courtyard there is a lovely sliver of sunlight, and you can also see the keep. It was mainly used as a watchtower and a status symbol. The lower part was built in 1239, the top part was added in 1468.
Due to the extremely narrow and steep uneven stairway in its center it is not accessible for visitors to climb the tower. There is no emergency exit whatsoever and people can't pass each other on the stairs at all so I’m not sure I would have been up for it anyway!
I took a photo of the stone tiles of the roof. The pristine details that have been kept are incredible.
Next, we went down to the old horse stables (the oldest part of the castle and the basement of the Romanesque Palas). The stables are now used to display a small exhibition about torture and punishment in the Middle Ages and early modern days.
In the glass case in the center you can get a close look at some shame masks. The mask with the long ears was used as a punishment for those accused of spying. The one with the ball and chain was for adultery. The Call and chain pulled you down to the ground like a pig.
The last photo was taken on the way to the last stop of the tour, the forge.
We finished the tour in the Blacksmiths Workshop. The forge in this room is still in working condition.
In Conclusion
The drawbridge on the way out.
After our tour, we had about 20 minutes of free time before we had to head back to the bus, so we decided to check out the gift shop (I bought a really cool garden ornament for me and my mom and they were only $8 euro each and I paid like $3 euro for a cute canvas bag-photos below), the bathroom, and to the cafe and shared a delectable German coffee (coffee and a scoop of vanilla ice cream).
My biggest advice is to dress accordingly, watch your step, and don’t be afraid to stay a little behind the group (especially if you have headsets to hear you guide). The rooms are very small, and the tours were full, and it made the rooms feel crowded and hard to enjoy because they were stuffed with people. Be the last ones in the room so you can enjoy the room as it is emptying.
Have a great time!! Safe travels! Have you been to Marksburg Castle before? Tell us about it in the comments.
